Imagining Masculinities

This book examines the intersections between debates in critical studies of men and masculinities and debates on visual representation, investigating representations of men and masculinities in contemporary culture and examples of visual art that deconstruct those representations. It attends to various spaces associated with heteronormativity, including the visible domains of working life, leisure and public discourses, as well as less visible domains such as private spaces, lifestyle, desire and sexual agency.

1. Introduction: On Imagining Masculinities Part 1: Men, Masculinities, Their Places and Spaces 2. What’s Love Got to Do With It? Masculinities, Sexualities and Intimacies 3. Is Home a Safe Place to Be? Violence in the Hetero-Normative Realms 4. He Wants to Be Young and Beautiful: On Metrosexuality and Fashion Part 2: Men, Masculinities and Movement 5. Sculpting Your Own Success: To Gain or to Give It Up? 6. Globalising Working Life: Masculinities at the Border 7. Every Boy Dreams to Be a Football Star: On Sporting Body and Movement Part 3: Temporary and Permanent Transformations 8. Of the Sick and of the Weak 9. Transforming, Moulding and Altering Masculinities 10. On Imag-e-ning: Conclusions

“This book provides a very important and presently under-examined and under-theorised emphasis upon artwork, masculinities and heteronormativity. It is highly original in its discussion of imagining masculinities and offers a most welcome addition to the field of critical studies of men and masculinities and cultural and visual studies. It makes strong and inventive usage of feminist and other critical theoretical insights such as those drawing upon notions of postcolonial hybridity. There is no other book quite like it.”

– Professor Christine Beasley, Co-Director, The Fay Gale Centre for Research on Gender, University of Adelaide, Australia